Last Concert Of Proms Season

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32214, 5 February 1970, Page 12

Last Concert Of Proms Season

The laSt concert of the proms season attracted a very large audience to the Civic Theatre last evening. Dr Clyde Boiler again conducted and gave a heightened sense of purpose to each player. The programme began with elan in an composition by the contemporary American, Paul Creston, entitled, “Dance Overture.” The dance forms used had Spanish, English, French and American atmospheres because Florida had sometime been under the flags of these nations. The work was written for the bicentenary of the federated music clubs whose celebrations took place in Florida. Mr Creston certainly produced a very attractive overture and welded the national characteristics of the music into greater unity than the four nations themselves

would ever be likely to! achieve on any subject. The work was brilliantly orches-i trated. Schubert’s Symphony No. 5! • in B flat began with sylvan!, freshness and kept this atmosphere throughout the course! of the first movement with! splendid balance, broad phras-! ing, and artistic choice of' dynamics. The second movement was played with re-| straint but without losing any of the necessary roman-1 tic warmth. The third movement, a minuet, had courtly grace! and dignity and the last; 111 nVhmnnt Iran from Gm

works, ran freely in pleasant places. The first part of the pro-, gramme ended with the; Grand March, Ballet and! Chorus from “Aida.” Mem-! bers of the Royal Musical; Society provided the choir! and sang the first part with; carefully produced tone of! well-chosen timbres. The; singing came through the! orchestra well, and the clar-l ity of the words was admirable. The ballet was played! with sparkling tonal colours,; and we can look forward to the time when on a large) stage in the town hall we; might have a corps de ballet associated with the music. The second part of the concert began with the glorious “Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis,” by Vaughan Williams. This is one of the very great works for a string orchestra, and our players gave a memorable performance in which they and Dr Roller can justifiably take pride. Superb sonorities, answered with

silken delicacy by a small chamber orchestra, and refined string quartet playing by the leaders of the orchestral sections—Messrs Alex Lindsay, John Dodds, Vyvyan Yendoll and Wilfred Simonauer—made every moment a delight The programme needed this work, and it was all the more rewarding in that it

■came as a surprise, for it was not on the printed programme, nor. had it been advertised. The concert ended with the orchestra, the choir and a big battery of percussion giving a rousing and highlycoloured rendering of the Polovtsian Dances from] “Prince Igor” by Borodin.; The choir’s tone was splen-; I did and caught the atmosphere exactly, and the sing-! ing and playing had first-1 Iclass precision and stirring; 'eclat As an encore the; orchestra and choir gave a performance of “Battle Hymn I iof the Republic” with resounding effect —C.F.B.